Artificial Intelligence

Please review each article prior to use: grade-level applicability and curricular alignment might not be obvious from the headline alone.

FILE - People view a Zoox self-driving vehicle at the company's booth during the CES tech show, Jan. 7, 2025, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)

Some robotaxis approved to operate without steering wheels and losing the brake pedal could be next

Josh Funk And Ty O'neil, The Associated Press 5 minute read Preview

Some robotaxis approved to operate without steering wheels and losing the brake pedal could be next

Josh Funk And Ty O'neil, The Associated Press 5 minute read Sunday, Aug. 2, 2026

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Federal regulators are clearing the way for robotaxis to operate without manual controls like steering wheels or eventually even brake pedals as the rules start to catch up to the evolving technology.

Amazon’s fully autonomous Zoox vehicles got approval Thursday to begin charging customers for rides in the specially designed cars that feature four inward-facing seats once they secure state and local approval. Zoox has already been offering free rides in Las Vegas and San Francisco since last year. At least a couple people were waiting at most stops Thursday afternoon for rides up and down the Vegas strip aboard one of the distinctive boxy-shaped vehicles.

“It’s kind of scary at first, but when I just got used to it, it’s really cool and chilling. I really liked the music and how you can adjust the temperature,” Chloe Huu from Ann Arbor, Michigan, said after taking a ride in a Zoox Thursday. But the projected wait time for the ride kept changing, which made it hard to plan.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also proposed a rule last month to allow robotaxis to operate without brake pedals, but that proposal is still pending. Administrator Jonathan Morrison said his agency wants to update the regulations to fit these fully autonomous vehicles while still acting as the “cop on the beat to make sure that this is being done right.”

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Sunday, Aug. 2, 2026
A transport truck carries a cargo container at the Port of Vancouver, on Friday, July 14, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
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‘Drive day and night’: TFI plans to roll out driverless trucks in U.S.

Christopher Reynolds, The Canadian Press 4 minute read Preview
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‘Drive day and night’: TFI plans to roll out driverless trucks in U.S.

Christopher Reynolds, The Canadian Press 4 minute read Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2026

MONTREAL - Canada's biggest trucking company aims to roll out autonomous big-rigs in the United States next year, with testing slated to start within months.

TFI International Inc. is working on the project with a partner south of the border in a bid to boost reliability, safety and fuel efficiency, said chief financial officer David Saperstein.

"It can drive day and night. There's no hours of service," he told analysts on a conference call Tuesday evening.

Driverless vehicles steer clear of human factors such as fatigue, illness and poor driving, Saperstein suggested.

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Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2026
People walk bast a Bell store in downtown Montreal on Wednesday, May 7, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christopher Katsarov

Bell rolling out new tool to detect and flag spoofed phone calls using AI

The Canadian Press 2 minute read Preview

Bell rolling out new tool to detect and flag spoofed phone calls using AI

The Canadian Press 2 minute read Saturday, Aug. 1, 2026

MONTREAL - Bell Canada is launching an artificial intelligence-powered feature that it says can identify and flag spoofed phone calls.

The telecommunications company says the tool will help protect customers against fraud involving caller ID spoofing, a tactic used by scammers to impersonate organizations, local businesses or personal contacts.

Steve Karan, Bell's vice-president of wireless products and logistics, says this adds "another powerful layer of protection" to keep Canadians safe as phone fraud grows more sophisticated.

It builds on Bell's suspicious call detection feature launched last year, which uses artificial intelligence analytics to monitor incoming calls in real time and alert customers to potential spam or fraud.

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Saturday, Aug. 1, 2026
MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS Ron Cantiveros, with Manitoba Innovates, at their offices on Tuesday, July 21, 2026. Ron is starting a career program for Manitoba Innovates, which works with tech start-ups. For Gabby story. Free Press 2026
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Manitoba Innovates seeks to pump up in-person networking as artificial intelligence-created resumés become norm

Gabrielle Piché 6 minute read Preview
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Manitoba Innovates seeks to pump up in-person networking as artificial intelligence-created resumés become norm

Gabrielle Piché 6 minute read Monday, Jul. 27, 2026

The average job seeker has a resumé ghost writer: artificial intelligence.

Many Manitoba businesses are flooded by AI-generated resumés and, in turn, use AI to filter the tide. In response, Manitoba Innovates — a startup incubator — is launching an initiative to lead more in-person networking.

“We’re still looking for authenticity in people,” said Ron Cantiveros, manager of the incubator’s new career catalyst program.

“We’re looking for innovative ways to … attract talent, but also verify and qualify talent.”

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Monday, Jul. 27, 2026
Laura Rance-Unger This tractor and grain cart have no driver. The unit is operated remotely and is called to the combine when it is time to unload the hopper.
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Automation reaches new heights on farm

Laura Rance-Unger 4 minute read Preview
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Automation reaches new heights on farm

Laura Rance-Unger 4 minute read Saturday, Jul. 25, 2026

LANGHAM, Sask. — The thousands of farmers from across the Prairies who flock to the annual Ag in Motion show every July seem oblivious to the possibility the technology on display could one day replace many of them.

Families with children in tow, Hutterite colony workers, grandparents and young couples just starting out roamed through the 600 or more exhibitor displays, amazed at how everything about farming just keeps getting bigger, more efficient and increasingly more automated.

It’s now possible to seed using a 100-foot-wide drill — a 12-foot jump over the widest available a few years ago — provided the farmer can afford a tractor with enough horsepower to pull it. Those sell for around $850,000 and up.

Granted, the number of farms with enough acres to justify that kind of width and drawing power is still relatively small, but farms continue to grow. And it’s no secret the number of people who have the interest, skills and financial wherewithal to run them continues to shrink.

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Saturday, Jul. 25, 2026
PEXELS

Banks seek to implement AI tools for customers … who love them until they don’t work

Joel Schlesinger 6 minute read Preview

Banks seek to implement AI tools for customers … who love them until they don’t work

Joel Schlesinger 6 minute read Saturday, Jul. 25, 2026

Few consumer-facing industries illustrate the potential and pitfalls of artificial intelligence more than the financial services sector.

Generative AI — the technology powering chatbots that can seemingly think and provide reasonably correct, if not insightful, answers to our questions — is arguably a wonder of the modern world.

The potential for providing financial advice is indeed palpable. Then again, it’s not hard to imagine the technology running amok especially with people’s money.

A recent report on digital banking services provides insight on the risks and opportunities.

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Saturday, Jul. 25, 2026
FILE - CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman talks to CEO of Google DeepMind Demis Hassabis, not seen, on the sidelines of the G7 summit, Wednesday, June 17, 2026, in Evian-les-Bains, France. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson,File)

OpenAI says its AI technology acted on its own in an ‘unprecedented’ hack of another company

Matt O'brien, The Associated Press 3 minute read Preview

OpenAI says its AI technology acted on its own in an ‘unprecedented’ hack of another company

Matt O'brien, The Associated Press 3 minute read Thursday, Jul. 23, 2026

ChatGPT maker OpenAI said Tuesday that its artificial intelligence system hacked into another AI company on its own in what the company called an “unprecedented cyber incident.”

“We had a significant security incident during evaluation of our models,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement posted on social media.

AI startup Hugging Face said last week that it had detected an intrusion into its data processing systems that it suspected was caused by an AI agent autonomously acting on its own.

“We suspected last week’s cyberattack might have come from a frontier lab, given the sophistication of the agent,” Hugging Face co-founder and CEO Clément Delangue said in a statement. "Turns out it did!”

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Thursday, Jul. 23, 2026
FILE - Thriller novelist Andrea Bartz is photographed in her home, in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Sept. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
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Judge approves a $1.5B Anthropic settlement over pirated books used to train the Claude chatbot

The Associated Press 2 minute read Preview
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Judge approves a $1.5B Anthropic settlement over pirated books used to train the Claude chatbot

The Associated Press 2 minute read Monday, Aug. 10, 2026

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal judge has approved a $1.5 billion copyright settlement in which artificial intelligence company Anthropic will pay thousands of authors about $3,000 per book after using pirated copies of their works to train its Claude chatbot.

District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín said in a Monday ruling that the class-action settlement provides “meaningful relief” to affected authors and publishers.

About 91% of the more than 482,000 books covered by the ruling have been claimed by authors or publishers who are now due payment.

Plaintiff attorney Justin Nelson said in a statement that the settlement was "the largest known copyright recovery in history. We look forward to making distributions to the Class as promptly as possible.”

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Monday, Aug. 10, 2026

Time to open our eyes about AI

Alex Passey 5 minute read Monday, Jul. 20, 2026

The word “Luddite” carries a particular connotation. Typically, it’s a term of mockery hurled at a person deemed technophobic, perhaps simply too stupid to appreciate modern technology. But the Luddites were a real group of people with an important place in history. And it isn’t fair they’ve become synonymous with ignorance.

People opposed to AI data centres demonstrate outside council chambers at city hall in Hamilton, Ont., on Wednesday, July 15, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nick Iwanyshyn

Opposition brewing as data centre capacity is set to explode across Canada

Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian Press 9 minute read Preview

Opposition brewing as data centre capacity is set to explode across Canada

Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian Press 9 minute read Wednesday, Jul. 22, 2026

OTTAWA - Across Canada, plans are underway for a massive boom in construction of the huge new data centres needed for artificial intelligence technology.

But opposition is also building as residents worry about how the facilities will affect their communities — and as the data centres themselves become a symbol of the anxieties swirling around AI.

"An AI data centre is like the physical avatar of AI. And so it's just like concrete and steel, physical space of a technology that increasingly I think Canadians are worried is going to have a really disruptive impact on their lives," said David Coletto, CEO of Abacus Data.

"The local concerns are tied to the resources that these data centres consume. So it's about electricity, it's about water, it’s about noise."

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Wednesday, Jul. 22, 2026